Kc Allen
Forum Replies Created
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I’ll have to look into that. I’m not from a large town but we have several larger cities within 100 miles that may have AdFeds. You’re right – getting your wares in front of agencies would help my biz a lot.
KC Allen
Allen Film & Video“My name is actually spelled KC…really…it is…”
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I disagree. You sign up for these posts to get help and advice from peers, not to be knocked down and dragged about when the respondent doesn’t know the circumstances behind the scenes. If one can not be helpful without offering unsolicited criticism, they’d be best not to try to help at all.
KC Allen
Allen Film & Video“My name is actually spelled KC…really…it is…”
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As a self-taught FCP guy who knows that a course or two would help out immensely, I can’t imagine the time it would take to go back to Premiere and use it like a Pro. I moved away from Premiere in 2001 and never looked back. We looked at Avid in 2006, but then saw Apple’s new FCS2 and the addition of Color and decided that Avid just wasn’t attractive enough to budge away from something we already had, already knew and had already paid for. I also think one MAJOR weakness in the Adobe suite is Soundbooth. For cripes sake, you’d think they’d bundle Audition in there. I don’t much care for Soundtrack, so I export audio to the PC so I can use Audition, then I bring it back in. Over a SAN or even a network connection the workflow is cake. I was using Cool Edit Pro when I was in radio so I have a huge level of comfort with Audition. They made a mistake bundling the weaker Soundbooth.
KC Allen
Allen Film & Video“My name is actually spelled KC…really…it is…”
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There is a way to transfer XDCAM footage to FCP using firewire via log & capture, right from the camera. I rarely use it, preferring to use the XDCAM transfer software, but in the case that firewire capture is necessary, you can check your settings in-camera. FAM (file access mode) is the setup it uses for file transfer with the software, but if you want to use FireWire, go to the Operations menu and set the iLink mode to AV/C.
KC Allen
Allen Film & Video“My name is actually spelled KC…really…it is…”
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I don’t mean to be a dip-wad, but I have a question. I’ve been editing video since 2001, and I have never used the V1, V2, etc., nor the A1, A2 and so on. I just bring in the footage I want, layer it the way it works and BAM! I’ve got a video. So, tell me, what is the purpose of that functionality and why should I be paying more attention to it? I’m self-taught, but it hasn’t kept me from making a living and getting some nice clientele. However, I’m always eager to learn a new trick.
OH – and along those same lines, I’ve tried to do edits using CMD E, or whatever that keyboard combo is, and I can never get the edit to slide to where the playhead is. What am I doing wrong?
KC Allen
Allen Film & Video, Ltd.KC Allen
Allen Film & Video“My name is actually spelled KC…really…it is…”
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Same thing here – we used a Canon EOS 20D up on rafters to capture one shot every 20 minutes at a plant that was building an auto parts press over a 6-week span. The still camera worked great, the shots were equivalent to progressive HD. We bought a cheap laptop at WalMart and used ratchet straps to hold the camera and computer in place. We bought the AC adapter for the Canon, plugged the laptop into an outlet with AC as well and turned the energy savers off. We used Canon’s capture software to capture shots directly to the laptop. The software had a limit of 999 photos, and we couldn’t program it not to shoot at night when nothing was going on, so we had to travel down to location once a week to dump the photos to CD and restart the program. Footage looks awesome! Two years is quite a commitment – I agree with using a cheaper camera as long as you can find good capture software that would allow you to capture directly to a computer. One other thing – the computer had to be re-booted each trip too to clean out the cache. 999 photos will slow your system down, so rebooting is a great way to speed it up.
KC Allen
Allen Film & Video“My name is actually spelled KC…really…it is…”
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I have used the V1U camera, but I now own the EX1. My perspective is this. The V1U had really nice footage. It was good enough to match the footage I shot with my XDCam shoulder-mounted 350, which is a darn nice camera. I considered buying the V1U, but then decided to stay with the XDCam line, and I’m glad I did. No more tapes to buy and capture. I just dump the footage to my computer, and then I can clean off the card and use it again. But here’s the thing…
When using the V1U, I actually had to come to the Cow to figure out how to capture the footage on the thing, and then once I figured it out, it was that long, boring, linear capture. (It was a press conference, so I had to capture it all). I was also using my XDCam 350 that day, and its disc-based file system captured much faster than the V1U. As for the EX1? It’s file based system is the same as the XDCam 350, but the SxS cards unload on my computer more than twice as fast as transferring files from my XDCam 350. The XDCam 350 was twice as fast as linear tape capture, and the EX1 is twice as fast as my XDCam 350. That right there – plus – NO MORE TAPES or ARTIFACTS should be enough right there to convince you to spend the extra money, get the hottest camera on the market, and get started on the CineAlta line of cameras. By the way – the light level capability is awesome, it’s full HD (it’ll do both 1080 and 720) and it feels like a pro camera. The V1U, as nice as it was, felt and acted like a prosumer camera.
KC Allen
Allen Film & Video“My name is actually spelled KC…really…it is…”
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They may be corrupted files. If you can open them in photoshop, you might try saving them as PNG files which seem to work better for me in FCP. I’ve never had a problem with files being too large to import, however, there is a point where you could probably stand to cut a file down unless you plan to pan and scan or apply some specific animation to the enlarged photo. Also – one other thing. Make sure your JPEGs are in RGB mode. FCP doesn’t like CMYK files very well. That might help too.
KC Allen
Allen Film & Video“My name is actually spelled KC…really…it is…”
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Two things you could do. You could NEST the various layers of the timeline and apply one dissolve to the group of layers. The layers are still editable by double-clicking the nest. The other thing is to place a black matte on your top layer and extend the end of the matte over the beginning of the video. Then simply dissolve out of that black matte into your video. Remove all transitions from the front of the video layers – since they’re behind the black matte, they’ll no longer be necessary.
KC Allen
Allen Film & Video“My name is actually spelled KC…really…it is…”
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Try using PNG files. They’re compressed but you can choose whether to interlace or not. PNG files always look great to me, but you could also use TIF files, which are larger and uncompressed. Photoshop will let you save RGB files to PNG. I usually merge all the layers into one (don’t flatten cuz that kills your alpha layer), then save to PNG.
KC Allen
Allen Film & Video“My name is actually spelled KC…really…it is…”